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Subjunctive posted:Then how are people determining its effects? It seems well-established that it's a big problem, but I can't tell how it's known. There's no real data. It may be a contributing factor to some degree, but I really can't believe it's a significant causal factor. Locals are participating fully in the market at these prices too. Even if you managed to stop foreign investment, I don't see how that changes the market significantly. I could be wrong, but who the hell knows? I am, however, convinced that people grab on to the foreign ownership thing because it's way easier to blame an outside group for your problems.
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Feb 5, 2016 07:21
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Subjunctive posted:It's a typo, the $76,000 number has been trotted out before. This is hilarious, because a significant portion of that money is calculated as a fraction of the land value increase due to the zoning change. So the developer is actually coming out ahead for densifying. Buying land already zoned for the occupancy type would have even *greater* costs to the developer but would have significantly lower government fees. A headline of "Land is probably overpriced!" Wouldn't be an excuse to bitch about government fees, I guess.
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Feb 10, 2016 23:03
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ZShakespeare posted:People who don't understand liability and fiduciary duty ITT They're a regulated profession. They should be educated appropriately so that they can do their jobs, or otherwise retain outside opinions. How the hell can a real estate agent properly advise you without being able to tell you how much real estate is going to cost you? They don't need to be tax experts. They need to know the basic rules relating to their job well enough to deal with standard situations and well enough that they know when to engage someone else.
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Feb 15, 2016 21:49
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Freezer posted:For every 1% that average salary increased, you could see a corresponding 5% jump in house prices? sure, sounds really responsible and sustainable... That's not what that says at all? The loan you could get would increase in size by 1%. You make $100,000, they loan you $500,000. You make $101,000, they loan you $505,000. 1% larger loan.
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Feb 16, 2016 20:38
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Cultural Imperial posted:http://www.vancouversun.com/news/prominent+architects+slam+vancouver+planning+development/11747697/story.html Wow... that actually looks like an improvement! quote:[...] What the gently caress? The planner works for the manager of development? In what world does that make any sense? "Oh hey guys, we've fixed the conflict of interest by making the big picture dude report to the guy in charge of making money and building as much stuff as possible"
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Feb 28, 2016 19:47
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McGavin posted:Yes, the Hindenburg only exploded because it didn't have enough hydrogen in it. Larger wood sections perform significantly better under fire conditions and retain strength for extended periods of fire exposure. So, yeah, that statement made lots of sense and you dont know what you're talking about. Given our modern requirements for fire ratings, exit routes and active sprinkler systems it's probably pretty likely that we can come up with requirements that result in reasonably fire safe wood buildings that are at least a handful of floors taller than what are currently typical. Until recently that was fairly moot, because the economy wasn't there. Buildings of more than a handful of stories aren't really feasible without modern engineered wood products. Caps for wood building heights in codes were generally also near the practical structural limits of light wood framing. From a conceptual standpoint, our fire protection requirements should extend fairly well to wood buildings that are a couple of floors taller. There has been a lot of research going on recently. The various structural and fire code councils are very slow moving and general changes won't happen until there is a bunch of research there and safe fire protection requirements are in place.
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Mar 2, 2016 09:09
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Subjunctive posted:Oddly, there is no cement lobby in BC. The Cement Association of Canada definitely lobbies the government. I don't think the BC Ready-Mixed Concrete Association does, but I'm not sure. I bet Lafarge has a lobbyist or two.
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Mar 2, 2016 09:22
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quaint bucket posted:. The Georgia Straight has more numbers http://www.straight.com/news/658116/city-vancouver-rent-out-future-southeast-false-creek-public-housing-900-studio-1500 quote:According to the city, 40 percent of the units in the building will rent below what is called the ‘housing income limits’ that are set by the province. There are parts of this I would do differently, we need significantly more city owned affordable housing, and there are other parts of the market that need to be addressed, but this is something that could legitimately form part of a housing strategy. I would say that this is a small but generally positive thing. City owned, price controlled with a mixed income. I'm curious how they worked their numbers for the low end, though. After tax it doesn't seem to make full sense. $900 for a bachelor is low now, but even a few years ago was reasonable market in the area. It feels like it should be lower if we're aiming at that sort of income range. I can deal with baby steps at the moment, though, since it's loving amazing compared to no steps. T.C. fucked around with this message at 00:32 on Mar 16, 2016 |
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Mar 16, 2016 00:27
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Triglav posted:Right, but in simple terms, Canadian dollars are worth approximately 25% less today than they were in 2013. From that alone you can presume, no other factors changed, which I know is overly simple but bear with me, that any asset purchased in 2013 has appreciated 25% against the Canadian dollar. If houses were an import item or something, sure. The market for residential housing should primarily be domestic. Canadian housing shouldn't respond as if it were priced in American dollars.
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May 28, 2016 21:11
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the talent deficit posted:but vancouver has the best seismic standards outside japan so prob not really that either I'm a structural engineer and this isn't even close to true...
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Jun 8, 2016 20:35
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What weirds me out is that staging a house to hide known flaws and not disclosing them gets played as the buyer being a chump instead of the seller being knowingly fraudulent in how he is presenting a product. I mean, obviously a buyer needs to do their diligence, but not disclosing things that any buyer would be interested in and that the seller is fully aware of is bullshit. I get that a layman might not be able to have knowledgeable opinions on the structure of the building, but they loving know that a reasonable person would assume that an oven is actually wired and functioning.
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Jul 6, 2016 21:14
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Physiotherapists are hit or miss. Some are very good at helping direct and control rehabilitation and similar things. They help safely build up muscles strength, increase flexibility and other fun things. There are a whole series of them associated with the local spine clinic. Others do poo poo like laser light therapy or questionable patented systems like active release therapy. From my experiences, lots will also try to diagnose things that they should really send someone to a doctor for. There are also some that try to convince people that absolutely everything is caused by muscle imbalances. There is a spot in the medical system for physiotherapy done correctly.
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Aug 12, 2016 05:20
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THC posted:Strata rules are very clear about keyfob guidelines and deactivations. There's a point to be made about stratas maybe having too much power, but you picked the one situation where nearly everyone can agree that a strata has exactly the right amount of power and actually exercised it to the benefit of all the people living there. I'm not sorry that guy got burned when he rented an illegal suite. You can make whatever crazy-assed bylaws you want. It doesn't mean they're enforcable. Even the BC Condo Home Owner's Association thinks that denying access is a good way to get sued. http://www.choa.bc.ca/wp-content/uploads/pdf/300/300-657%2029102015%20Denying%20access%20to%20a%20building.pdf
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Oct 2, 2016 21:04
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There are arguments against skytrain expansion, but that is a mess of an argument. My favorite part was complaining about rich people not wanting to use the canada line at oakridge and then immediately moving on to arguing that the only way rich people will buy ubc property is if there is a skytrain... Also, somehow never actually talking about the existing users of the b line routes is weird. The 99 is the busiest bus route in north America. The b lines serve something like 60% of the 2011 canada line's daily ridership already and can't keep up with current capacity.
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Jan 8, 2019 08:40
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Ah yes, the time tested 'politician style lawn sign' method of eviction notice and proof of ownership.
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Apr 20, 2019 02:50
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James Baud posted:Engineer banned from working in B.C. after Surrey tower fails to meet building code That wouldn't be a big deal. It's reasonable to pull requirements from a newer code if they meet or exceed the intent of the current code. People do that on a semi regular basis What this dude did was grab less conservative stuff from a newer code while not taking other requirements that were more conservative. The implication from the finding is that he was doing it at a level that didn't meet the intent of the code. He was cherry picking code clauses, which is bullshit. Also, his gravity system is more than 20 percent under designed, which is absolutely terrible.
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May 9, 2019 18:15
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Sassafras posted:Saw this chart, couldn't help but repost re: my "big city buyers (ie, high earners) completely untouched by pandemic" case: The rest of the economy hasn't had time to process what's happened. There are going to be all sorts of consequences as things ripple out. Edit: but yeah, as always, the working class will take an unfair amount of the brunt of things The economics of low wage earners is really straightforward in a lot of cases. Not enough immediate production or sales and you drop them. The higher wages earners are justified in longer time scales and it's harder to connect specific people to specific income and expenses. We won't get an idea of how hard it's going to hit or how bad recovery will be for a couple of quarters. This is like when a company loses a major client but across the whole economy. We are in the 'this is temporary. We will figure something out. Let's just get through the next few weeks' with small batches of layoffs part before reality kicks in.
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Jun 6, 2020 03:40
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Sassafras posted:Or hotels! BC isn't bailing out the hotel industry. They're trying to backfill emergency housing stock with hotels that are already built and able to reasonably quickly take people.
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Aug 13, 2020 16:59
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Mantle posted:https://www.timescolonist.com/real-estate/third-generation-landowner-wants-exemption-from-speculation-tax-1.24193865 quote:The third-generation owner of a waterfront property in North Saanich is urging the province to create an exemption under its speculation and vacancy tax for long-term owners such as himself. It's great that the entire article and issue is predicated on not being able to read the last half of the tax name. Also, they have a foundation that is responsible for millions of dollars of charitable donations but are eager to fight against taxes. T.C. fucked around with this message at 18:23 on Aug 29, 2020 |
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Aug 29, 2020 18:20
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yippee cahier posted:These people ALWAYS save their big threat for most of the way through their letters -- it might make more sense for them to sell the house! They think this is taking their ball and going home but are too self centred to realize that someone else would be buying the ball. "I might have to sell my vacant property!" threatens confused man too stupid to understand law meant to reduce the number of unoccupied properties
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Aug 29, 2020 19:05
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Basement suites have been used as a way to over leverage on a mortgage in BC since well before they were legal. It's the main reason they're prevalent.
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Aug 30, 2020 07:10
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PittTheElder posted:Eh that still doesn't really change the argument about variable being better always. Though the cash back thing would. Have variable rate mortgages existed as a real option through a time of sustained interest rate increase? If not, the premise behind variable rate having always been historically better is pretty faulty.
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Nov 29, 2020 09:28
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That same person totally talks about how smart they are for investing in real estate and how stupid it is to rent.
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Dec 12, 2020 03:40
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half cocaine posted:https://twitter.com/owenbigland/status/1346119235928354817 25 years to approve construction of 60 social housing units? ? ? Don't you think we should show down and think about this!
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Jan 6, 2021 19:11
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My girlfriend was looking at a townhouse in burnaby. It's only 20 years old but has had significant roof problems and has had to do structural repairs on decks in half the units. There was about $800,000 of work done in the last year and from implications in the strata minutes there are likely $500,000-$1,000,000 in special levies spread across 60 units coming in the next five years. They just fired their strata management company last month. The engineering reports on the decks weren't made available before offers, and the depreciation report is like ten plus years old and it's unclear what's been done out of the significant major projects listed in it. The owner's agent couldn't answer questions on these things. She decided there was too much risk in the situation and didn't offer on it. It sold for $120,000 above the $600,000 asking price on the first day it was open to offers, $100,000 over what other units went for a month ago. What the christ, people.
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Feb 12, 2021 06:56
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Is newer property better? There's 200 square feet more in a one or two bedroom from the 1970s or 80s than there is in a modern one. You tend to pay about the same for both of those, in the same neighbourhood.
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Feb 25, 2021 06:01
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Yeah, it's hilariously clearly in bad faith. They've gone the 'family moving in route' because as of July all evictions to allow for renovation are automatically done through a submittal to the residential tenancy branch and a mandatory hearing rather than a notice to the owner that can be appealed to the RTB. So they've abandoned doing that. This new thing is just an insanely bad faith action Also, if you've built up a corporate ownership structure of any sort, the corporation doesn't loving have family. You get to hide your personal liabiliy behind a company, then you don't get the benefits of having personal ownership. This isn't a family that owns a duplex and they're moving their son in. This is a company that owns enough units that they're basically a commodity and it does not matter if they move their family into one of their units or take the money from renting those units and use that money to rent out something else. There is no societal benefit that this policy provides at this scale of ownership. At all. There is no reason not to try , though. The penalty for acting in bad faith is payment to the tenant of a year's rent. They'll make that back in a year at the rent level from the article. In theory, the eviction could also be halted, but in that case the worst penalty is just the status quo. There is no economic reason that the landlord shouldn't try this. The regulation is fully inadequate. For this to have any teeth bad faith action should result in something like the renter's choice of: 1) Reinstatement of the existing lease plus 6 months of rent 2) Payment of 12 months of the units new rent at market value 3) Payment of 60 months of the unit's new rent at market value if the owner has more than 20 units Also, there should be mandatory RTB application for any sort of landlord initiated eviction and significant increases in funding to the RTB and tenant support services so that the process is reduced to a couple of weeks. Also, in a multiunit building, any eviction for family use should have to be at or above the median rent for a unit of that class in that building.
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Aug 15, 2021 22:24
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Baronjutter posted:The whole "I'm moving a family member in" is such a grossly abused loophole. It's also stupid because what the hell does blood or genetics have to do with tenant rights? What's extra stupid is that we've pushed a bunch of rentals into condos. Since you can't evict an existing tenant to put in a new tenant when you sell, it's uneconomical to buy an existing rented unit to use as a new rental. The cashflow doesn't work because property prices are stupid and you can buy a different unit for the same price that's vacant and rent it out for more. So the current rental units aren't targeted by investment buyers. They buy from owner occupied units. People who owner occupy don't have the same problem, so they buy the rental units and get to evict the existing renter. So our system does not have any meaningful protection of tenancy through a sale for these units even though there is protection in theory. The system economically incentivizes this behaviour. Even without explicit fraud like saying you'll occupy and not doing it
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Aug 17, 2021 01:11
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CBC.ca: Arbitrator rules partially in favour of long-term Kitsilano tenants who alleged they were being 'renovovicted': https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/vancouver-kitsilano-apartment-renoviction-tenancy-arbitration-1.6161599 They rule that two of the people moving in were not believable because they are too rich to want to live there, so they can't do it. But then the other two are potentially living in cheap enough places that they night want to move in. Then they allowed those latter two evictions to take place while admitting that it is probably in bad faith but that it doesn't matter that is in bad faith. quote:"Even if the landlord has future plans to renovate this residential complex, I find it entirely possible that close family members of the landlord would like to occupy a unit(s) in the property while planning and completing those renovations," the arbitrator wrote. Weeee
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Sep 4, 2021 19:48
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On the subject of UPCC and other integrated care facilities that work with their personnel as staff, I think it's a model that has to happen, it just needs to be heavily expanded to make a real difference. The doctor as a private contractor model was important to the way we transitioned to public care in Canada, but it's a pretty poo poo system for the doctor that's just coming in. A new doctor isn't set up to be a business person, or do the kind of admin work that's necessary to back that up. You end up with older doctors with infrastructure acting as gatekeepers. There's no reason they should be spending their time managing that poo poo. It's also a terrible way to try and balance care across an area. Government as the employer feels like a much better model to allow doctors to just be doctors.
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Jan 30, 2022 04:04
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HookShot posted:Yeah, but given as this guy ALSO signed a contract with no conditions without realizing it had no conditions he also absolutely sounds like the kind of moron who could have been told "uh by the way this is zoned both commercial and residential" and just went with it because what could possibly go wrong. On the one hand, the standard offer forms are usually two to four pages long max and will have a section labelled CONDITIONS where conditions are listed in reasonably plain language and they would usually write 'none' if there are not any. So you'd think this would be obvious. On the other hand, people will generally go through this process a small handful of times in their life if they have the means to do it at all. Some people don't do well in legal contexts, may not understand what is there by default, may lack the confidence to ask and appear stupid, or may just overlook things in the stress of the situation. Realistically, a real estate agent that was actually trying to do their job should be verbally explaining the offer to their client, walking them through each part of it and the implications. So yeah, the dude seems clueless, but explaining these things is legit the reason agents justify their presence, so if they actually didn't walk the client clearly through the offer they are real bad. The problem is that a person off the street won't know what they don't know, so may not be able to ask, which is the whole reason for theoretically having people with experience inserted in the process to look after their interests. There are lots of people who will just trust that their real estate agent has them covered and will protect them from poo poo. This is obviously naive, but it's what the industry tells them they can do. It's also why it's crazy how little liability a real estate agent holds.
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Jun 22, 2022 08:48
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Purgatory Glory posted:Let's be real, it's a Chinese landlord looking for a Chinese student. They get their housing paid for by their parents and don't make a peep. They are also the only ones that would subject themselves to a GPA check because of ignorance of customs here. The ad itself is ignorant of Canadian customs. The area just east of UBC in Vancouver is all single family homes and generally whiter than lots of the rest of the city and I wouldn't have been surprised to see this as a requirement there. This is just usual small landlord bullshit where they think they can cherry pick 'good' tenants by working off whatever their own projections are. There are lots of old white people who would project a high GPA onto a 'good' white Anglican kid or something. Also, kids (and lots of adults) have no idea what landlords are allowed to ask them for. Most small landlords also have no clue what they're not allowed to do. The dude you're renting a basement suite from completely violating tenancy laws because they haven't even read them is totally in line with Canadian customs.
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Jul 12, 2022 09:15
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kaom posted:It needs to be the steepest ever for an extended period of time to even take us back to where prices were when this thread was started lol This is actually a problem I'm having mentally. I thought prices were too high to make sense fifteen years ago. I still academically think that's true but if pricing dropped 30% I think my expectations have changed so much that it would emotionally feel like a deal
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Aug 24, 2022 21:40
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Frank Dillinger posted:I’ll second that one. Friends’s dad is a realtor. Do never hire a friend’s dad. You shouldn't hire people you know to give you input on large scale money things. If you need to find a person it should be a person that a friend or family member has a purely business relationship with. You don't want the extra complication of social pressure when you're making decisions, you want to be able to tell them no and to fire them for no reason, and you don't want to have to think about your non ideal decisions whenever you run into the person.
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Sep 25, 2022 19:11
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And that's just the conventional lender. I was talking to a guy who is a broker for various types of subprime loans and the whole conversation was just terrifying
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Oct 13, 2022 22:06
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Real estate generally being a leveraged investment is part of why people think it's such a good return, even if they don't understand that it's leveraged. Putting down 200k on a 800k place that has a 10 percent price increase is a 40 percent return minus debt carrying costs. Part of why real estate is overpriced is because the downside risk is treated like it's zero, so people price profitability based on the 40 percent return minus debt costs. I kind of wonder what structuring mortgages as floating based on a percentage of the market price would do . I'm sure that fucks things up a different way but it would mean the bank shares the downside risk and the upside gains, and it takes away the mechanism of gains on a leveraged purchase all going to purchaser.
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Feb 6, 2023 23:06
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Boot and Rally posted:My reading of the thread is that most people want protections for people who want a place to live. The speculators will either need much tighter restrictions or to be excluded through other means like taxing it so much to not make it worth it. It's also that it's unreasonable to expect people to make consistently good decisions in a system where you are involved a couple of times in your life and every other party spends all day living in the environment. The people that we actually want to support in this situation are not at all sophisticated actors on average and it's not reasonable to expect them to be. The pretend fix for that is real estate agents who are supposed to act in a person's best interests. But they don't, and their interests are in direct conflict. It's a really broken system where people basically just trust that the people around them know what they're doing and sign away decades of their income because it's how you do it.
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Feb 6, 2023 23:14
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MickeyFinn posted:What fraction of houses are sold every year? That is what matters. I’m guessing it is one percent or less. So a small fraction of homeowners needing to sell can be very large compared to the market. That would imply that the average residential property, including condos, is held for a hundred years or more. Don't know the number and a two second Google didn't tell me but you are likely off by an order of magnitude
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Feb 11, 2023 04:22
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The last Vancouver election was weird because there were a bunch of different parties that were not familiar to people. People couldn't just lean into things they were familiar with. It's also tricky because several of the slates didn't have enough candidates to fill out a ballot. I go through the entire voters guide and review, and it was hard to figure out what people were actually running for this year. Because there wasn't history behind many of the organizations and the platforms were clearly selling things and not reflecting what the candidates were. You would have a party that was running on a very generic platform and then when you dug into the candidates you would realize that they were all from a development background even though they didn't mention property development in their platforms. On top of this, it's municipal politics and parties are loose associations where you might have three socialists and two libertarians that just stare a view on the importance of community centers, so really you should probably be looking at every single person. It was the normal political game of having to use past history to redefine what a platform meant but instead of having that history you would have to do a deep dive into people's LinkedIns and Twitter histories to try to guess at it. But there were like 100 candidates and most people aren't doing that poo poo. So the get of the vote poo poo didn't work because there weren't preexisting supporters. ABC just put their name out there everywhere and had a stupidly generic platform. So people get to the voting booth and they know who someone is and they vote for them. I feel like a bunch of it is that simple.
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Mar 8, 2023 18:33
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Unless there's consistent upward value in the Canadian dollar versus the American dollar what happens if the interest rate gap between the US and Canadian central banks widens?
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Mar 21, 2023 19:26
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